


Scars and the New World

by 50artists



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Domestic Violence, more specific warnings in chapter notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2020-08-10 03:10:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50artists/pseuds/50artists
Summary: That was her life: alcoholic, trapped in an awful marriage, saddled with a baby and not even thirty years old.And then the bombs fell.(Nora adapts a bit too well to the apocalypse.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I started replaying Fallout 4 and thought I might write some little 500 word drabble about Hancock. Then as I was writing, I kept thinking more and more about the Sole Survivor, and what her life was like in the (not) 1950s, and then it all turned into this mess. The first part isn't even about Hancock any more but I hope some people still enjoy it.
> 
> I took quite a few liberties with my interpretation of the 2070s, basically making them more of a direct social parallel to the real world 1950s. Most noticeably I took away the female sole survivor's law degree (sorry Nora) and generally did away with the gender equality present in the canon Fallout world where we can find records of women with high ranking jobs and roles in the army, etc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for: emotional abuse, alcoholism, dubiously consensual sex in a past relationship,

A clock ticked slowly.

Nora slumped on the sofa. Somewhere in the background, the TV was lit up and the sitcom she was watching blared out from the speakers. 

She loved this show, Nora told herself sternly; she loved the married couple, both of them beautiful and perfect and young. The wife was nothing like Nora. She wore kitten heels and little pinafore dresses, and when her husband spoke, she giggled at every word in her pretty, high-pitched voice. “Hello honey,” she trilled whenever he stepped through the door, “how was work?”

Nora watched them religiously. Their gentle sitcom adventures were like a bad parody of her own life. Something viewed through the warping mirrors they had at carnivals. In the show, the wife had a few too many glasses of prosecco at her husband’s work dinner and had to be taken home, her charming face flushed red and giggling; in real life Nora hid wine under the bed and drank it first thing in the morning, and her husband looked at her with cold eyes when he came home to find her sprawled, once again, face first on the kitchen table. In the show, the husband got passed on a promotion and hatched a scheme to prove his worth; in real life Nate's career was on a downwards trajectory, and he took out his anger at home, shouting at Nora until he looked fit to burst, his big shoulders hard and tense. In the show, the wife made innuendo-laden comments with a cheeky wink to the audience; in real life Nora and Nate hadn't had sex since Shaun's conception, which was itself a short and somewhat rough affair, not enjoyable for anyone. Wasn’t it hilarious, living as a parody of yourself? Nora screwed her eyes shut. The TV continued to drone on and on. Fucking hilarious.

It was all her own fault. There had been a time when she’d wanted this, fought tooth and nail to snare Nate (at the time, an up-and-coming young soldier) and marry him in a big white dress, and do all the things that everyone else seemed fulfilled by. She really did try. For years she cleaned the house and cooked and planted pretty flowers in the garden and gossiped with the other housewives in their suburb. She laid back and made appreciative noises as Nate fucked her, and turned a blind eye to his failing career. She put on a thick cake of makeup each morning and made tea on demand. She  _ tried _ .

But the years dragged into a blur. The occasional glass of wine became a glass every evening, became two, became a bottle. Nora stopped bothering with the chores and the house became filthy. She stopped wearing makeup. Some days, even dragging herself out of bed became impossible. The other housewives started to whisper behind her back.

What was wrong? Where was the wrongness? She wasn’t a stupid woman. In fact she’d done well in school, very well, too well - she had to tone herself down once she was mature enough to realise that people didn’t like a know-it-all, and men didn’t like to feel nagged at, and it was easier to smile and shut up. It seemed that she wasn’t smart enough to solve this puzzle, though, and the wrongness lingered and festered and grew into something impenetrable.

Ironically, Shaun was supposed to make it all better.

Wasn’t that what married couples did? Wasn’t that what Nora was missing, the source of all this sickness? Nora was only following expectations. Or more accurately, Nate was following expectations - he was the one insisting they needed a baby, that his colleagues were beginning to find him odd, that his parents were pestering him for grandchildren. “Can’t you be normal, for once in your life?” He’d asked Nora, anger rising in his voice while she tried to explain that she didn’t  _ want _ a baby. Not just anger, though. There was desperation there, and in his eyes. "Of course you want a child. It's instinctual. You're a woman, for God's sake, aren't you? You're literally designed for it. Lay back and stop arguing with me."

Nora did love Shaun, of course. 

In a way. 

No, she did love him, more than she knew it was possible to love another person; but he didn’t  _ fix _ her. Far from it. Every day as the swell of her own belly grew Nora felt herself sinking deeper and deeper, despondent and hysterical. It was a relief when he was born and she could finally drink again. She was useless. She was half-comatose throughout the day.

They had to buy a butler. The robot was out of their budget, but - as Nate screamed at her one evening when he came home to find her drunk out of her mind and Shaun left wailing in an overflowing diaper - if they left the baby alone with Nora, it was only a matter of time until something bad happened.

So that was her life. Alcoholic, trapped in an awful marriage, saddled with a baby and not even thirty years old.

And then the bombs fell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for contemplation of suicide

So she stumbled, blinking, into the scarred landscape outside Vault 111. Her head was so light with adrenaline and fear that Nora could barely think - she didn’t even seem to have metabolised all the remaining booze from her system yet, though according to the terminals she found it’d been years and years since she was last awake, and even thinking about it made her feel close to vomiting, so she resolved not to think.

Nate was dead. Shaun was missing. Her life - such as it was - had been ripped away forever, and she was left reeling in the aftermath.

She sat on the ground and tried to stop her heart from pounding out of her chest.

What was she going to do?

Nora hugged her knees to her chest. It was like missing a limb, when she was away from Nate; for years he’d supported her, kept her afloat, paid bills and sorted out the house while she wasted away. It had been a lifetime since she'd made a decision without his oversight. Nate chose everything, from what they ate and what dress Nora wore in the morning, to the house they lived in and the debts they took out. 

He couldn't help now. He was well and truly dead. Nora had checked; she felt the cold skin of his neck, and even smacked him once, hard across the face, although she felt guilty afterward.

What now? What on Earth was she supposed to do here, on the wreckage of everything she’d already ruined?

She wanted a glass of wine, she knew that much. Her hands were shaking.

She wanted a whole bottle of wine.

Maybe she could stay here in the dirt forever, until she wasted down to her bones. Just another corpse, like the ones in the vault. Nora shivered. Her hands clenched around the pistol she’d found, and she looked down at it, the harsh sun glinting off its equally harsh metal planes. Wouldn’t that be the easiest way? Better to end it all now, perhaps, than to meet some horrible fate out in the wasteland she could see sprawled before her. Nora wasn’t even tough enough to survive normal life, domestic life. How could she possibly deal with this? How could she meet anything but torture, if she lived on?

With a trembling hand, she brought the gun up to her temple. Its cold muzzle scraped against her skin.

Nora breathed.

She breathed in again, deep, letting the air rush through every branch of her lungs.

That feeling - the air, pure and cool in her body, the gentle motion of hundreds of tiny muscle fibres that allowed her to move, all threaded between the rungs of her ribs - was too precious. Nora lowered the gun. 

She wasn’t even brave enough for this, she realised. She was beyond useless. Every part of her body trembled.

Eventually, she had to move.

“Oh, Nora,” she muttered to herself as she went, “Nora, Nora, Nora,” because she could think of nothing else to say. 

~*~*~

The sky was vast above her. Had it always been so vibrant, she wondered? Or had she never properly looked at it, in all the years she’d been on Earth?

Even the charred remains of Sanctuary were beautiful, in a twisted way. The light of the sun caught on the jagged metal, the exposed innards of the overpriced houses with their cheap insulation and paper-thin walls. Nora crept between the houses, tip-toeing around the outer perimeter. Her heels were too inconvenient; she had to kick them off, and the tarmac cut into her feet. She was ready to flinch at any noise. Both of her hands gripped tight around her little pistol, even though she barely knew how to use it.

It wasn’t just stress making her sweaty and shaky. Nora was  _ dying _ for wine - or any drink at all. She'd even have accepted some of the brandy Nate kept in the back cupboard for special occasions, that made her retch when she stole a sip. The need for it made her head swim with pain and her eyes lag slowly in their sockets. Nora knew it was withdrawal, logically. By now she’d been sober almost a full day (or five hundred years, depending how you measured it). That didn’t abate her paranoia as she crept through her wrecked neighbourhood - and was it paranoia, really, or was it common sense? One wrong move and she could die. She’d seen the size of those roaches in the vault, and the thought of those giant mandibles closing around her through made Nora almost want to try shooting herself all over again. And those were just the roaches!

Something rustled in an overgrown bush.

Without even thinking Nora whipped around and shot her gun, again and again, pressing the trigger until it began to click uselessly. 

She was drawing in air in great, panicked breaths. Barely able to think past the fear rising in her throat, she stumbled forwards, and through the undergrowth she saw what she'd done; there was the splintered carcass of something like a mosquito, but the size of a dog, its wings still twitching even as the rancid smell of its innards filled the air. Nora gagged. This couldn’t be real. She was asleep, she was dreaming, in a few moments surely she’d wake up and Nate would be by her side and wine would be stowed beneath her bed and Shaun would be wailing in the opposite room, and maybe it wouldn’t be good, but at least it would be familiar.

She blinked. She forced her eyes open and closed. The results stayed the same: Nora was awake, and all of this, from the wreckage to the mosquito to the vault suit, was 100% real.

Even as she trembled, though, an odd feeling of excitement hit her. No. Not excitement. It must be fear, Nora reasoned; no decent woman would be excited at this situation. And yet the sight of the dead mosquito, killed by her own hand, gave Nora her first little glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, she could survive.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some mild gore and death

Nora wasn't ready. The days passed regardless.

Surviving her first twenty-four hours in the wasteland seemed almost impossible. She was shaky from withdrawal and barely able to hold a gun; reloading it for the first time took over an hour, as she tried to understand which parts slid out and where the new bullets fitted. The only thing she could find to eat were a few rusty cans of cold beans. She broke them open against rocks and scooped the food out with her bare hands, like a filthy animal. A raccoon. When night fell, she was too petrified to close her eyes for even a moment.

And yet she survived. The first day passed. Her alcohol withdrawal symptoms made for a very sweaty and uncomfortable couple of nights, but she survived. One day turned to two. Then three. Then a week had passed. Slowly, Nora got back onto her feet.

Before she knew it, she had stopped craving wine at every moment of the day. She learnt how to hold her pistol so that the recoil didn't wrench at her shoulder. She learnt how to light a fire, and cook the meat of creatures she killed. None of it came naturally and all of it was repulsive; but her only choice was to survive or die, and to Nora's own amazement, she chose to survive.

After two weeks, she left Sanctuary. She strapped on leather and metal and any mangled piece of clothing that she thought might bring her protection, and she walked slowly, the cold metal of her pistol clenched hard in her palm. It was terrifying - but she had to leave. She had to do _ something. _ She had to survive. Deciding what to do for herself was a burden without Nate; Nora felt as though part of her brain was weak from lack of use. A good housewife didn't _ think _ too much, didn't worry and nag and involve herself in matters over her own head - but suddenly Nora needed every scrap of her wits and then some. The change was jarring.

The creatures out in the real empty, desolate wastes were nastier and harder to kill. At one point giant rats burst out of the concrete. Nora managed to kill them, but she was so spooked that she spent the rest of the day unmoving, staring at the concrete and praying nothing else was lurking beneath.

She learnt to sleep on the hard ground with one eye metaphorically open and a finger on the trigger.

If the creatures were bad, the people were worse. Nora finally found a little settlement, barely more than a cluster of drifters on a radiation-scorched farm, all watching her with distrustful eyes. They were haggard and pock-marked and missing teeth. They wouldn't just give her water; Nora had to trade for it, three big steaks of mole rat flesh in return for barely a day's hydration. Then they watched her back as she left. The idea that their fear was warranted - that other humans, not only animals, might now become threats - made Nora wish fervently that Nate was here to protect her. Someone like him, big and strong and army-vicious, might stand a chance against another man. Not nervous, useless Nora.

(But then, asked a traitorous part of Nora's mind, would Nate_ really _ protect her? Or would he abandon her the second she became a nuisance, just like he always did?)

It didn't matter. There was no Nate. She had to protect herself.

Fear and determination held Nora together like taut wires. She painstakingly improved her armour with parts scavenged and bartered for and stolen. She became desensitised to her own body odour, stopped fretting about the tangled mat of her hair, and felt only appreciation for the gnarled calluses that began to form along her palms.

One evening, when the sun was low and the sky was hazy, a bullet whizzed past Nora's head. There was no warning. Pure instinct sent her tumbling to the ground before her brain even processed what had happened. Panic filled her. It was a different kind of panic that she felt nowadays, though, cold and calculated, a shot of adrenaline that helped more than hindered. Who was shooting? Where were they? Every muscle of her body screamed with tension, but she laid, played dead, controlled her breathing until she felt nothing but a disconnected calm. Her hand gripped her pistol so hard it became painful.

After minutes that felt like hours, footsteps approached. Nora waited. She had to time this perfectly. There was no margin for error, no choice but to survive - and whatever it took, she was_ going _ to survive.

Her attacker stepped closer.

Quick as a flash, Nora flipped herself over and shot.

She only had a second to aim. A brief impression of a man in leather armour and a ski mask, rearing back in shock - and then he was tumbling to the ground, a bullet between his eyes, and Nora was clambering back onto her shaky feet. She had never killed a human before. Forcing herself to move, she emptied a couple more bullets into his chest. Just to be safe. The adrenaline thrummed through her veins as blood seeped from his.

She stole his nice leather arm piece and a packet of Yum Yum Devilled Eggs. Then Nora noticed something else; she flipped the corpse over, admired the holster strapped snugly against her attacker's back, and the smart shotgun inside. It was so much bigger than her pistol, reassuring as she cradled it in her arms. Moving quickly now, not wanting to linger too long where other attackers might follow, Nora unstrapped the holster and fitted it over her own torso. She couldn't help but admire the weight of the weapon against her back. It made her feel invulnerable.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, another piece of the TV housewife withered away and died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayy! Next chapter, Hancock should finally make an appearance.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no new warnings for this one!

Six months after waking up in Vault 111, Nora met Hancock.

As a rule, she avoided civilisation. Days could pass without Nora uttering a word. She’d heard of cities that’d sprung up in the old wastes of Boston, and felt no urge to investigate them.

But she had tangled with super mutants nearby and come off the worse for wear. One of them had shot through the muscle of her thigh, and the wound was stinging enough to give Nora a noticeable limp. The last thing she needed was an untreated infection. So she went stumbling through the gates of Goodneighbor feeling pissed off and sore, only to immediately be confronted by some joker asking for 'insurance', as if Nora had either the caps or the patience for bullshit today. "That's right, insurance," the man said, apparently unaware that Nora was one second away from blasting his head into a fine mist. "You hand over everything in your pockets, or -"

"You better back off," Nora interrupted him, her hand already reaching to the shotgun holster on her back.

Yet again, the man didn't listen. Maybe he thought Nora would be an easy mark, although that was happening less and less, nowadays. 

She was almost unrecognisable from where she’d started; the wastelands had not been kind on her looks. Nora had always been thin and soft, but as she travelled deeper into the wasteland, she became wiry with muscle, the cords and tendons in her arms as strong as steel. She walked differently, she moved differently. Rather than lowering her eyes she learnt to stare directly into someone's gaze, and she lost the instinct to smile, to placate, when faced with anger. One time near the coast, a man who tried to rob her with a little switchblade scratched a deep gash across the left side of her face, stretching from her mouth all the way up to her forehead, only narrowly missing her eye. It taught Nora a lesson: shoot first, ask questions later. When the wound healed, it left a brutal scar, shockingly white and puckered.

There had been deeper changes, though, more permanent ones. Nora knew that shooting, even at humans, no longer caused the revulsion it should have. If anything she liked it. There was a grim satisfaction in seeing a bullet splinter through a hard outer shell, feeling the thud of adrenaline through her body and the tang of death in the air. 

She didn't linger anywhere. She killed bugs. She killed giant, naked mole rats that burst up from the ground. She killed feral ghouls that stumbled with surprising speed and warped, still-human faces. She killed humans, raiders, people who tried to rob her; she stripped their corpses and moved on. 

When she slept, it was on the hard ground, always with one eye metaphorically open. When she ate it was the charred meat of her own kills, or old, canned food that tasted sharp of rust. Everything fizzed with radiation. 

(Nora was good at this.)

“What was that?” Asked the idiot interrogating her at the Goodneighbor gate, apparently  _ still _ not understanding that Nora meant business even as she gripped her gun and glared blue murder at him. A nasty smile on his face that almost tipped his cigarette out from between his lips. "I couldn't hear you over the sound of all that pathetic."

And really, that line was so horrendously cheesy that Nora felt no remorse as she brought her shotgun round in a smooth arc and shot the man clean between his eyes. His head crumpled in on itself as he collapsed.

A resounding silence followed.

"I like you already," said the unmistakably rough voice of a ghoul, "walk into a new place and make a show of dominance. Nice."

Nora whipped around. There he was; a ghoul in a big tricorn hat and red coat, grinning at her, his scarred palms held wide open as though in reassurance. Just from the way he stood, Nora could tell this guy was tough. He may be smiling, but he was leant on the balls of his feet, and Nora was sure that if she tried to shoot he'd be gone in a flash. She lowered her gun. 

"You like that, huh?" Nora said, her scar tugging at her mouth in the way it did right before she smiled. "I just walked into town and shot a man in the face. If you were smart you'd be chasing me out."

The ghoul shrugged. "Goodneighbor ain't that sorta place. It's all, of the people, for the people, you feel me? Everyone's welcome."

"Says you. Not sure the police are gonna agree."

"Trust me, ain't no police here. This ain't Diamond City. And don't you go worrying about the higher-ups, I'm on your side." He swept his hat off and gave an exaggerated bow. "Mayor Hancock at your service."

"Huh."

"Speechless? I have that effect. It's my good looks, I reckon."

"Oh, sure," Nora returned, but there was no heat to her words. She was relaxing despite herself. "How the fuck did you get elected mayor? Where I came from, it was all old men with moustaches and long speeches."

"Where you 'come from' sounds boring as hell, sister - and besides, I can give a mean speech. Ask anyone."

That was not technically an answer to her question, but Nora let it slide. She put her shotgun back into its holster. People were already starting to mill around the two of them, and while a few stared, no one seemed unduly concerned about the dead body sprawled on the floor; perhaps he'd been a nuisance, or else Hancock's influence was strong enough that people would turn a blind eye to murder. Nora wasn't certain which was more reassuring. "You know anywhere around here I can buy a shitload of stimpaks?" She asked. "And some 12 gauge shells. And a room for the night. Maybe some food, too."

"Sounds like you want a full tour," Hancock said, with a smile that stretched his skin and warped the shape of his scars. He held out his arm

Nora hesitated. Truth be told, this was the longest conversation she'd had in weeks, and her instinctive response was to refuse; but she liked Hancock despite herself, and so instead she nodded. "You better give me the full works," she warned, "I want to know every inch of Goodneighbor from the inside out. Think you can manage that, Mister Mayor?"

He grinned again. The smile suited him. "Every inch. I swear."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. It's been..... 7 months... :3c  
but i'm legally not even allowed to leave the house ATM (yay quarantine) so there's no better time to resurrect this fic! I did go back and re-write the first couple of chapters but there were no significant changes, just made some of the wording less clunky etc.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is [xenixat](http://xenixat.tumblr.com) :^)


End file.
